[ExI] The Futurism of Elon Musk

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> 



 

>…I will tell ya about Elon Musk from a neighbor’s eye view.  …All is not lost.  Some is not even really lost, it’s around here somewhere.  Just saw some a while ago.  Mr. Musk sold us the coal burners, and Mr. Musk also has a solution to the dusk power shortage problem for sale.  Stand by, for this post is already too long…spike

 

 

OK so… lotta locals around here work at Mr. Musk’s factory up the street, but even those who do not might work making steering wheels and ordering wheel bearings and making the various electronic gazazzafratzes and things Mr. Musk puts into his nifty little hotwatt coal burners.

 

OK, so… that has an impact.  We see construction crews all over the place, cleaning up, fixing up, building backyard granny units, painting, maintaining, generally improving the neighborhood, anyone who wants a job can get a job, so… of course we realize that in the long run, all of this happened because Musk built that factory right here in previously poverty-stricken Fremont California, cool!

 

Sure, we have power shortages now, particularly at sunset on hot days, but… there is a solution to that, and Mr. Musk will sell it to us.

 

The lithium battery caused an engineering revolution in transportation, and it also creates a revolution in power.  Reasoning: as we lean toward green power, there are engineering tradeoffs.  The cost goes up and the reliability goes down (because renewable sources are intermittent (the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.))  

 

All is not lost, not even some really: we understand that energy storage systems are needed.  Energy storage is inherently expensive, and it makes economic sense for the power company to tolerate blackouts rather than run up the power even higher building mass energy storage.  So… they go that route.  

 

Having the power go out impacts some customers more than others: a lot of us work from home or study from home.  So we have our own generators, but those only run the refrigerator and the laptop computers.  In the last coupla, I have fired up mine trice.  The neighbors on either side and over the back fence already know that sound and what it means:  Plug in your refrigerator and phone charger strip to a powerstrip, drop the cord over the fence, spike will plug it in, keep four refrigerators and I don’t even know how many phones and laptops running, and if you have a laptop, you don’t really need lights, ja?  All of that, using just a little cheap camper generator.

 

OK, well sure, but that is noisy and undignified, ja?

 

So… Mr. Musk offers a nifty (expensive but hip) solution called the Power Wall.  It is little more than a bunch of Tesla batteries that is part of your house.  It has its own high capacity inverter and all that, so if (eh… when) the power goes out, no problem, your good old Power Wall keeps all your stuff (except the AC) going right on as if nothing happened, and if you really have a lot of money it can even run your AC.

 

The cool fun part of all this is that the individual proles pay for those depending on how much the can tolerate a power outage.  I will not buy one because I don’t own a coal burner (outta my price range) and with a bit of grit and determination, I can survive for a few hours without the ability to post a big breezy commentary to ExI.

 

Meanwhile, none of this required any political intervention, those willing and able to pay did so, the poorer of us see our power bills go down (mine did), my more capital-enabled neighbors buy the Power Wall, Mr. Musk gets still richer, some of that trickles back down, neighborhoods are spruced up, construction crews are busy, and… we (indirectly) are enabled to install more green and renewable energy sources because we have increasing ability to deal with power intermittence which is what limited green energy sources all along.  

 

Sheesh, how often does THIS happen?  Eeeeverybody wins!  The poor, the rich, the EVERYBODY who likes to breath cleaner air, the everybody.  Cool!  All you proles with more money than you know what to do with, please go buy a Tesla.

 

Thank you Mr. Musk.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

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